


Spilled Blood

by doublejoint



Category: One Piece
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28672590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Very little in this world is more beautiful than the destruction wrought by Killer’s hands.
Relationships: Eustass Kid/Killer
Comments: 7
Kudos: 41





	Spilled Blood

Kid wakes up to the smell of blood flooding his nostrils, and he reaches his hand up to make sure it’s not him, getting a bloody nose with the changing of the seasons or from his own errant elbow to the face. Nothing. And there’s nothing in his other arm, outstretched; the bed is empty and the covers have all been pushed to the end of the shitty mattress, so Kid doesn’t have to be a genius to put it all together, even in half-sleep.

Killer will be fine; Killer’s always fine, but is the rest of their crew? If they weren’t, Killer would have woken him up, and even so, Kid needs to see this. He rolls out of bed, throws on a pair of pants, grabs his goggles, and shoves the window out and open, and there, on the square outside, is Killer, surrounded, weapons drawn, and the smell of blood is thick in the air like sugar. The window beside him opens; it’s Wire, in the next room—

“Why aren’t you down there, Captain?”

Kid shrugs. “Just woke up.”

Killer slashes right, then left, blood spattering over his mask, down his shirt, flecking his chest; he kicks with one boot and drives his scythe into his opponent’s neck. Who are these people, anyway? Not that it really matters, not that Killer won’t let him know, anyway--Kid feels his fingers tighten, itch, grip around the hilt of an imaginary knife. He’s got two strapped into his pockets, could throw them from here, and there is nothing better than fighting at Killer’s side, but--he’ll let Killer have this, this time. He looks like he needs it; the air feels like Killer needs it. Killer blocks a stab with an axe at his back, one blade flashing as he meets it, kicks back. 

“How much you think his bounty will go up?” says Wire.

“Depends on who these guys are,” says Kid, his gaze unmoving as Killer trips up another assailant, stabs them in the back as they goes down, meets a ferocious yell from another person with his bloody mask, head-on, and gouges with both scythes their stomach. Very little in this world is more beautiful than the destruction wrought by Killer’s hands, rending and tearing and slashing, leaving the square stained red like tie-dye patterns, the blood caking in his hair in dark contrast, his hands slotted into his weapons as if that’s what they were made to do. 

Killer tilts his head up toward them (Wire’s being crowded out of the window by some of the others), jerks his head--Kid doesn’t need to be told twice. He calls his boots to his hands by their metal buckles, jams them on his feet, and jumps down, landing hard on the balls of his feet.

“Fuck,” he spits, noticing how dry his mouth is, and yeah he doesn’t look his best, doesn’t have his best weapons, but even at a disadvantage he out to clear through them with the anger on his face and the knives in his pockets, the metal in his blood. They won’t live to tell anyone how unkempt he looked, and the people close enough to see but too afraid to fight won’t register it, if they register anything at all.

The innkeeper tries to have them arrested as they’re leaving. Kid figures they weren’t going to pay up anyway (they’re pirates; did anyone expect them to?) and, well, there’s no harm to cutting their way through the useless brigade of local Marines and law enforcement sent to round them up. 

(“Was it worth it?” he asks Killer, later, as the ship is out on the ocean.

“Yes,” says Killer, and Kid can tell that underneath the mask he’s biting back a smile.)

* * *

They have fought their way through South Blue, through the first half of the Grand Line, coming up on the New World, so soon--there will be time enough, Kid thinks, except for all of their competition, warlords and emperors and established pirates and a bunch of other rookies, amateurs, Kid would say, except while his bounty is higher than any of theirs, they’re coming up on him, and some of them have bounties higher than his crewmates, who are damn well professionals.

There is so much time and so little time, warped like wood wet and dried over and over again, like the floorboards of the deck that they hadn’t properly finished on the stern side, the ones that still give them splinters when they dig into their bare heels into the wood, the wind snapping the fringe on Killer’s pants against Kid’s legs, Kid’s hands on Killer’s jaw, right where it emerges from the mask. Like it’s just the two of them, setting sail on the boat they’d had all to themselves, all over again, like a long time ago when Killer hadn’t covered his face with more than his hair and Kid was still shorter and skinnier than him, like when neither of them could have carved out a vein of blood in the middle of an open town street alone. 

They’re the ones keeping watch tonight, far from the last Marine ship they’d shot down, far from the last opposing pirate who’d tried to shoot at them, nothing but open water and a needle on the log pose, hovering towards the next destination. Even in the dark, Killer doesn’t like to take his mask all the way off, but when he tugs Kid closer by his necklace, when Kid again reaches up, he doesn’t resist when Kid carefully pulls the mask up past his mouth, dark lipstick smudged at the right corner, carefully arranged in a neutral expression. His fingers tighten in the strands of the necklace (“Don’t fucking break it,” Kid murmurs as he draws closer) and then curl against the skin of Kid’s chest when Kid kisses him. 

He can’t stop the smile breaking against Kid’s mouth, but he’s always said, always truthfully, that like this it’s okay. (If Kid needed an excuse to steal more kisses--though, steal isn’t the right word, he always just takes them, and from Killer it always feels good to take what’s offered, what’s given--and then some, though he can’t stop his greed and Killer won’t try and doesn’t want him to.) 

He still smells a little like someone else’s blood, though neither of them will ever be clean of it. It’s too deep under their skin, like veins of ore under the earth; no matter how much you pull out you won’t get it all. And they wouldn’t want to anyway; they will always, as long as they can help it, spill more blood.

**Author's Note:**

> hbd kid (even though this is mostly about killer)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
